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| Summer 2009 CommentsBest Intentions: An Appreciation of Graham GreeneI n Washington, where the honorific “historic” ornaments every speech, appointment, conclave, and legislative initiative however trivial, those who earn their living purporting to explain “what it all means” have a limitless supply of material. Small wonder that the senatorial defection of an unprincipled hack from one party to the other qualifies as Big News, while the nomination of an associate justice to a seat on the Supreme Court becomes equivalent in significance to the Normandy invasion ... Full text articleWow. This should be the literary stake-thru-the-heart of our insane worldview since at least 1947. Our craven fear and ignorant arrogance have yet to run their course, to my own lament, and our great cost. I read The Quiet American in a literature class in 1967 then volunteered for Viet Nam a year later. Go figure, Tom Mix, it's in the blood. How then, pray tell, to assuage the consciences of Americans who look across the globe and see dictatorships, suppression of basic human rights and all the miasma of ills we do not suffer here? Would you have us shrug our shoulders, say, "well, best not to intervene, it can only make things worse, so I accept the status quo," and return to our reality television? It should have been expected that with a superior power deploying a SURGE, the insurgence would hunker down and wait - classic insurgency strategy in response. So what will happen IF WE LEAVE. I don't believe it will be pretty. Why do we not get the END GAME from the Neo-cons? Amagi, that is a false choice, and you know it. As American citizens, we always have the opportunity to individually direct our many blessings to help those in need around the world. That does not mean we have to utilize the power of the US military. As is so often the case, it is the non-interventionists who are somehow considered the source of evil (or at best, innocent rubes), when in fact it is the globalists (Wilson, Bush, et. al.) with their grandiose plans to remake the world using the Dept of DEFENSE (e.g "make the world safe for democracy", "plant the seeds of democracy") who end up responsible for so much mayhem. Ironically, this often also serves to undermine our security. Our military's obligation is to protect and defend our Constitution...nothing more, nothing less. Peace be with you. I'm with Amagi. It's easy to snipe from the sterile comfort of ambivalence. In reality, it's a form of naive and destructive innocence much more damaging that Pyle's. Amagi, don't you think it's possible to "intervene" in a more personal, less violent way that deploys commercial and NGO resources--rather than the governmental instruments of force and violence? To a Christian like Greene, the kind of "intervention" you seem to be advocating is no "intervention" at all, because it patronizes and condescends to the subjects of the "intervention," not allowing them a say in how the situation they're in should be rectified. Brilliant piece. It should be required reading in all schools, in order that the next generation might be a little less "innocent". The institutionalization of pretend christianity, the "I'm not responsible, god told me to do it and/or Satan made me do it", by business, government and churches is what makes christianity appealing. The institutionalization of the false doctrines legitimizes them. Throughout history mankind has sought ways to avoid being responsible for their conduct and the pretend christianity provides a seemingly legitimate ways to do so because the teaching are institutionalized. Robert McNamara came to mind reading this article. Sir, was it 'bad luck', 'bad planning' or 'bad tactics' that the Bush/Cheney liars were not stopped over 8 years neither by the US voters nor by Congress and even less by the great majoritiy of the media? Forceful and cogent! I do hope Mr. Obama gets to read it. For the seeds of democracy to flourish, they must be planted in the craters of 1,000 pound bombs. Andrew J. Bacevich is a brilliant writer. To include 'Sin' in his lexicon of crimes committed in Iraq and elsewhere, I applaud, but I believe the concept a stretch for the imagination of even the more religious of Post Modern Americans. As in Vietnam, America has done little in Iraq to warrant or deserve forgiveness. If there ever was any doubt that we are a self interested country then it was dispelled by Bush..now Obama...there is nothing wrong with self interest actually it is quite healthy but when our self interest results in massive death and destruction it is very unhealthy to us and the poor people we ars "helping." Bravo. I bought your book; I thought it was brilliant. I campaigned for Obama, but now I am very disappointed in him. What does he think he is doing in Afghanistan? For every civilian death, there is a new convert to terrorism. We are supporting a backward, corrupt regime. Women have fewer rights than they had when we invaded the country. But, of course, America always does the right thing; we never have ulterior purposes. It's probably going to far to call Greene's critiques "scabrous anti-american". In his other books, he's equally critical of his own UK (cf Our Man in Havana)Americans in, eg, The Comedians. As for his relation to Catholicism, he was Paul VI's favorite author. I'm not sure that people outside the DC beltway and perhaps the midwest 'heart land' can even believe that AMerica means well. AmeriCANS may mean well, but the U.S. track record toward other countries is pretty bleak. During my years in Colombia, I found that Colombians could differentiae me from the government...but had no illusions about the government meaning well whatsoever. Colombians I met were still unhappy about losing Panama to the US canal administration! No need to bandy Greene's purported moral turpitude to separate the man from the existential clarity of his observations. Why does America write so much about its mistakes and gets into introspection and some kind of self flagellation.Is it the expression of the ordinary citizen who has no control over those who can make mistakes or blunders that even destroys nations and a way of life.There might be many more Graham Greene type stories of regrets and remorse fodder for the next decade and America can carry on the ideology and policy merry making. The finest take on this subject I have ever read. I read the novel for the first time while in Viet Nam this spring which made it even more powerful. Mr Bacevich has hit the nail on the Neo Con head. Yesterday, our (unitarian church-based in Kalamazoo, MI) bookclub adoped "Quiet American" as one of our selections this coming year, inspired by Dr. Bacevish's interview on NPR last week. (p.s. all unitarians are not so sure about God, anymore.) Thanks for this article, which so expands what I heard on the radio. I'll bet we'll have a great discussion on this book. The sin of the Pharisees was a focus on their own virtue and their national exceptionalism. We are not solely a "shining city on a hill," but sinful men and women. We need a national day of repentance more than a day of Thanksgiving and gluttony. A wise post. I will read the book. Graham Greene’s book The Quiet American: Another View In Graham Greene’s book The Quiet American, Greene’s protagonist Thomas Fowler excoriates America as having “too much money, too much confidence, and too little awareness.” Fowler sees these traits embodied in Alden Pyle — an American idealist. When Communists try to wrest colonial control of Indo-China from France, America decides to enter the fray. Pyle is just too innocent (or dumb) to understand the complexities of American meddling. (Reviewer Bacevich is convinced that Washington’s leaders never understand the ramifications or complexities of their foreign policies. Like most blanket pronouncements, the statement includes some truth. But only some.) Pyle’s job, either as a CIA operative or roped-in mercenary, is to devise a way “to stem the Communist tide threatening to inundate Southeast Asia.” The “agency” he works for wants an indigenous democratic alternative to French colonialism and Communism. They choose native General The as the appropriate local rebel to oust the Communists. With plastics supplied by Pyle, the general makes explosives for use against French military targets, knowing the results will be blamed on the Communists. Not a great idea. Then General The’s people manage to screw up and kill innocent civilians. Fowler blames Pyle – and by extension, America. Fowler is appalled by Pyle’s involvement in the bloodshed. This marks the first time protagonist Fowler has cared about anything. He doesn’t believe in God, ideals, or people. He’s a burned-out cynical reporter who pompously proclaims his neutrality. He condemns Pyle for using the local general to “save the local general populace.” But Flower has his own method to screw the local populace: to numb his own disillusionment with life, he moves in with a local girl, twenty-five years his junior, who perfectly supports his cynical disengagement; she asks no questions and provides plenty of sex and opium. Fowler, a British ex-patriot with a Catholic wife at home, passes himself off as Indo-China’s intellectual sympathizer. He is the one who decides that Pyle is wrong. Fowler says Pyle is “impregnably armored by his good intentions and his ignorance….” Professor Bacevich writes in his review, “Those who credit themselves with acting at the behest of the purest motives are hardly less likely to perpetrate evil than those who dismiss ideals as sheer poppycock.” Really? Since when do beliefs and intentions not count? Is that what students learn at universities? Greene gives one plenty to think about. There is no doubt that good intentions are frequently ill conceived and misapplied. However, Bacevich points out that The Quiet American “derives its energy from Greene’s scabrous anti-Americanism.” Therein lies the problem. Bacevich says that Graham’s book “became within a decade must-reading for those seeking to understand how the United States blundered so badly in Vietnam… how the United States blunder[s] so badly in Iraq and Afghanistan.” What blunders do they see now? South Vietnam with a free, prosperous society versus North Vietnam oppressing its starving people and raving about using nuclear bombs? People in Iraq living with less violence, more freedom, and more hope? People in Afghanistan risking their lives to vote for a freer society? Bacevich says, “Good intentions informed by the simplistic belief that the world can be fixed and things set right only succeed in killing people.” Really? How often has America’s belief that things can be set right, or at least improved, resulted in free, voting societies, wider education, hope for women, updated farming methods, and better infrastructure? Moreover, we have learned to revisit questions about every war’s purpose and justification. Too often in literature and reviews, America is the player charged with villainy, despite the facts that our incursions come with food, medical care, education, freedom, and hope. More often than not, we leave a country better for our intervention. Other countries’ colonialism, Communism, Fascism, or whatever “ism” they currently have on parade, does nothing more than pile more rape, pillaging, and murder on oppressed people. These plunderers have no good intentions: only their greedy desire to control people and scavenge countries. Is it preferable for Americans to close our eyes and let thugs pillage the world? As Bacevich points out, there is no doubt that sin is omnipresent: both Fowler and Pyle are evil and pathetic in their own ways. But to conclude from the fictional portrayal of ill-conceived plans perpetrated by flawed characters that there is no difference between good and evil seems incredible. Protagonist Thomas Fowler may have been right that in Greene’s 1950’s era book, America had “too much money” and “too much confidence.” We’re finding out that a crumbling, bureaucratized economy can go a long way toward alleviating those sins. As for those who always manage to see America as the villain: Can they be the ones who have “too little awareness?” (Nancy Glass West, BBA, MA/English, is the author of a biography, two mysteries, and a column of literary reviews and events for San Antonio Woman magazine. Her forthcoming book is Forever Fatal, An Aggie Mundeen Mystery.) One of the enduring myths of the Vietnam War, perpetuated by Andrew J. Bacevich (“Best Intentions,” Summer 2009), is that if we had just listened to Graham Greene’s narrative in The Quiet American, there would have been no Vietnam War. I was present in Saigon when Greene visited there in 1954. I know firsthand that his book was mainly based on impressions from that visit. He spent several drunken weeks with a group of dedicated French colonialists, mainly intelligence types, leaving the Continental Hotel bar in Saigon only long enough to make a brief trip north to see Hanoi before the Communists took over. The animus against Americans, self-evident in his book and further fueled by his general anti-American views, was inflamed by prevailing local French opinion. Sour at losing Vietnam, blaming the Americans for not intervening at Dien Bien Phu, and involved up to their necks with the Binh Xuyen gangster sect, the French were particularly bitter that the Vietnamese were turning away from them and toward the Americans. A bombing by Vietnamese nationalist Trinh Minh The unintentionally killed a number of civilians and is a key event (with exaggerated details) that Greene uses to illustrate the consequences of our stupidity and to justify Pyle’s being killed by the Vietminh. This happened, however, in 1953, long before there was any American contact with or support for The. French animus, which Greene imbibed, was further fueled by hatred of Diem, whom they could not control, and the American operative Colonel Edward G. Lansdale. Lansdale was dead set against any perpetuation of French colonial control, which would have sounded the death knell of any hope for Vietnamese non-Communist (but deeply nationalist) independence and survival. Thus the character of the American, Pyle—although Greene went to some length to deny the connection—is based on the French image of Lansdale as a naïf who does not understand Vietnam and blindly supports “democracy.” The, on the other hand, is pictured as nothing but a corrupt warlord with criminal operations in the north and with an American adviser cheek by jowl. In fact, he was a superb leader whose barefoot troops were as disciplined as the Vietminh and equally as loyal because The shared their sacrifices. The false analogy that Bacevich makes to more recent American mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan is that they too derived from some messianic complex to change the world and that Greene shows us the error of our ways. Leaving aside the question of whether we should have gone into Iraq at all, we now have to deal with the results of our early mistakes and more recent Iraqi improvements as we try to extricate ourselves while leaving something workable but un-pretty behind. As for Afghanistan, the theoretical world in which Bacevich operates is full of wonderful-sounding but unrealistic alternatives. Bacevich admits that Greene has no answers and that “Greene [even] suggests that the answers may not really matter.” “Indeed,” Bacevich quotes Greene as saying, “innocence is a kind of insanity.” In my firsthand experience, the mistakes we made in Vietnam, and many of those we made in Iraq and Afghanistan, had more to do with ignorance, and hubris—and, in the latter two instances, exaggerated fear, followed by poor judgment in the case of Iraq, and fecklessness in the case of Afghanistan—than with some original sin of American omnipotence and innocence. Rufus Phillips Kabul, Afghanistan Professor Bacevich is taken to task for his reading of Greene where Greene never intended to make large statements of foreign policy. Above all 'The Quiet American' is part of Greene's own 'fall from grace'. Like Waugh (and later Muriel Spark), Greene was a convert to Catholicism* among a generation of writer's in England that moved (in youth at least) leftwards in the 1930s. This alone – moving against the grain – is of interest. Greene was recruited into M.I.6., the counter espionage division of the Secret Intelligence Service during the war (1939–45), referred to euphemistically in his U.K. book jacket c.v. as "wartime service in the foreign office". He was a Pyle himself in one sense, a man 'sent abroad to lie for his country'. His M.I.6. posting at Freetown, in Sierra Leone, forms the setting tof his novel 'A Burnt Out Case', similarly downcast, and as tragic in aspect as 'The Quiet American'. In this novel the backdrop of war is mingled in uncertainty, bad faith and a forbidden love affair – the famed 'mortal sins' which stalk Greene's characters like a sub-plot. Greene's fondness for this depressive outlook spawned something of a literature post war in England. Poet Philip Larkin and John Le Carre (himself also a sometime real life secret agent), share to some extent a defeatist outlook, coupled to an inner struggle for mastery over oneself. To these writer's belief in anything – love, ambition, salvation – is merely a choice between worst and worse. No motive or judgement is simple, and all involve betrayal of one kind or another. Only one's unsatisfactory self is embraced. (This joyless state of existence was christened by critic's "Greeneland". Greene entered under a pseudonym a reader's competition in the 'New Statesman' weekly magazine for a brief extract of a typical depressive paragraph of 'Greeneland' prose. He came second.) If it is anything 'The Quiet American' is a parable. Pyle's innocence is attractive in one way but 'unnatural' in a grown up human being. The struggle for Phuong's favours reflects the state of international affairs where the old colonial powers were at the end of their time and the new, young fresh and rich power of America could sweep them away not with muscle but mere attractiveness. Yet, they came to the business of organising this 'fallen world' fresh and with no great inkling of the disappointments and brutalities which lay ahead. As fellow spy and friend (and later Catholic convert) Malcolm Muggeridge discovered on the other side of Africa in Beira, Mozambique, "they soon learned". 'The Quiet American' is no more a prescient text for Vietnam than 'Our Man in Havana' is of the Cuban Missile Crisis. But it does demonstrate the power of a great novelist to make something from the material of his own, unreliable as it might be, life. I would not myself chose it as a text by which to illuminate American foreign policy any more than I would Kipling. Bacevich poses difficult questions the glib will ignore and the impatient will find useless while the anti-warriors and anti-imperialists will see nothing but their own righteousness. Life goes on, even as the empire implodes much faster than all the anti-warriors put together, even if they were careful and compassionate enough to organize themselves into a viable political force, could dream of it. |  Submit Your Comment |
Posted by Antoinette | July 7, 2009 8:51:21 PM EDT